Work It, Baby
FRI 12/17 The Xeroxed flyer that says “FOUND” steals your attention: Could it be a fluffy white house cat? On closer inspection, the joke settles in: “One Gold Bar, Could Be Worth Millions,” it reads, listing detailed contact instructions. This kind of tongue-in-cheek artistic assault is the essence of I…
Memory Lane
Memories are strange, lurking things, hiding in the dark until something — an image, an object, a sound, a smell — flips a switch to briefly illuminate them. But while our memories may seem profound to us, they don’t always have the same significance for others. Try watching somebody else’s…
Get the Shaft
“First you have to be a sprinter, then you turn into a gymnast, then a weight lifter,” says coach David Butler. As he’s explaining the mechanics of pole-vaulting, a gazelle-like young collegian races down the track, plants her pole and launches herself gracefully over a suspended bungee before landing neatly…
Capsule Reviews
“Hyper’real’ism: Fellowship Series VI” Bill Davenport has been making a lot of quirky trompe l’oeil paintings of late, but with Dark Door, he’s taken fake to the next level of absurdity. Davenport has made a phenomenal and fantastically ridiculous sculpture. It’s a giant medieval-looking wooden door with big metal bolts…
Johnny Demonic
SAT 12/18The cheesy Burl Ives songs that mark this time of year can really make celebrating Jesus’ birth a living hell. Thankfully, local duo Johnny Killed Rock n’ Roll is offering up some ass-kickin’, caustic rock to save you from the torture of easy-listening. Over the past two years, JKRNR,…
A Christmas Night’s Dream
Christmas is here again — the lights are up, the Galleria’s choked with traffic, and the Theater District is trotting out our Christmas favorites. At the Alley, Charles Dickens is busy shaking his perennial chains with yet another revival of A Christmas Carol. The production, adapted and directed by Stephen…
How Would Jesus Groove?
TUE 12/21 When Jesus Christ Superstar debuted more than 30 years ago, people turned out to picket the blazingly hard-rock opera about Jesus’ last days. But today, Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s show is a theatrical standard. And while the Who’s Tommy, which featured a Christlike figure, came earlier…
The Great Gadsby
Robert Gadsby, long considered one of the most creative chefs in Los Angeles, opened his new restaurant, Noé, in the Houston Omni Hotel in mid-November. And in a surprise move, Gadsby announced he is pulling up roots in Tinseltown and relocating to Space City. Over the phone, Gadsby explained what…
New Year’s Eve Guide
It’s that time of year again: the end. A time to reflect on months past and dream of those yet to come. It’s a time for family… wait a minute, that time has passed. Tonight, we party. Quite possibly the biggest party night of the year since the Super Bowl,…
Wellington Wins
At last fall has arrived, and appetites have turned to heartier, holiday-style fare. For a real old-time feast, we suggest that favorite of former president Nixon, beef Wellington. At The Brownstone (2736 Virginia, 713-520-5666), the beef Wellington ($32) is served up in grand style, but it isn’t for the diet-conscious:…
Yin and Yang
This story was supposed to be pretty straightforward. Last Wednesday night, I went to the Continental Club to see Michael Haaga, the former dead horse guitarist now fronting what he calls a “heavy mellow” band. Haaga’s CD The Plus and Minus Show is my choice for local CD of the…
Risqué, Medium Rare
My fork and knife hover over a slice of double-cut New York strip “Pittsburgh.” It’s the best thing on the menu at the Strip House, the new downtown steak house that’s decorated with naughty pictures. The double-cut steak is a monstrous 32 ounces, a full two pounds, and that’s without…
Electric Avenue
Your buddy pops an unknown cassette into your car’s tape deck. Your latest crush burns you a mix CD. One of your co-workers e-mails you some MP3s. Your cool older brother hips you to his vinyl collection. Shootin’ the shit in the mall, the quad, the break room: That’s how…
Merry Christmas, Beeyotch!
Recently, a few friends and I gathered for a Christmas celebration. With my girl on my arm, some nog in my hand and a fire raging nearby, the night was a sublime salute to love, friendship and general goodwill. Then someone had to go and fuck up a good thing…
Rotation
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus Anti Records Back in the early ’80s, when Nick Cave was still the crazed, young, jackbooted-junkie singer for Australia’s perpetually destructing Birthday Party, he made it clear where he stood. “I am a figure of fun,” he would bray…
What Price Glory?
Dajleon Farr is sitting in a barbershop chair minding his own business when a stranger walks right up, thrusts out his hand and compliments the young man some consider the best 18-year-old tight end in the whole country. “I didn’t even know who he was,” shrugs Farr. Such is life…
Local Rotation
Drop Trio Leap Self-released Jazz is all about bold experimentation. From Miles Davis’s loved and reviled On the Corner through Phil Collins’s late-’70s trio Brand X to the more modern Earl Harvin Trio and Medeski, Martin & Wood, jazz players often have worked at new ways to further their sound…
Between the Lines
Minot Edwards is juggling three knives. This is one of the better ways to get kids’ attention. The dozen children and adults in the Project CALL learning center are focused on the short distance between the tips of the blades and Edwards’s nose. Add to this show Edwards’s gregarious, self-deprecating…
Playbill
Alejandro Escovedo When Alejandro Escovedo takes the stage Friday at the Continental Club, it will be like watching Douglas MacArthur stride through the water on his return to the Philippines. For some of us die-hard fans, it might even rival the oft-predicted but not yet realized return of a certain…
Time Out, Mack
Mack Brown is everyone’s favorite football coach, as long as you limit the universe to haters of the University of Texas. His screechy voice is forever droning out excuses for why his team can dominate the recruiting wars every year but can’t seem to get close to a national championship…
Anarchy in da USA
As I sip on my freebie, the crowd at Thermal (1601 Commerce) — mainly white indie rockers, but also a few dozen hard-core throwback-clad black hip-hop fans — begins to swell. Celebrated Hollertronix DJ Diplo takes to the ones and twos…and threes!? Has he really got three turntables up there?…
Letters
Food for Thought A balance for good: The people of Food Not Bombs truly exemplify giving-from-the-heart, without counting the cost — which is perhaps why they receive “rewards” in their lives [“Free Lunch,” by Keith Plocek, November 25]. They have learned that axiomatic Rule of the Universe that also contributes…
Cuts Like a Knife
The story is simple enough: Sometime during the dying days of the Tang Dynasty in China, though it could really be any time and any place, two cops named Leo (Andy Lau) and Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro) sit in a station house drinking tea. They decide one of them will go…
Spray It Loud
The morning of Wednesday, November 3, wasn’t a particularly easy one for some of us, especially those hungover from staying up late drinking and watching election results. There was a desire to break stuff — maybe key a car with a Bush-Cheney sticker or howl at the Halliburton building. What…
Sour Lemony
Directed by . With Jim Carrey, Emily . Rated PG.
This Week’s Day-by-Day Picks
Thursday, December 16If we at Night & Day knew that you could drink your way to a better society, then by our math, we would’ve already found a cure for cancer, homelessness and Ashlee Simpson. The folks at the Houston Margarita Society have been getting elegantly wasted for a good…
All You Can Eat
In Spanglish, which is less a story than a snapshot of a crumbling marriage populated by sitcom characters, Adam Sandler plays John Clasky, an average man with an above-average life. With his burgeoning double chin always covered in a slight shadow of stubble, he’s a celebrated chef who runs his…
Hail to the King
So far, the life of T. Sean Shannon, a big-shot writing supervisor for Saturday Night Live, has read much like a movie script of fellow SNL-er Adam Sandler: Good-natured funny guy leaves small town, conquers the big city and gets wildly successful — all while keeping his integrity and, more…
Capsule Reviews
I Remember Mama Theater icon and composer Richard Rodgers’s last musical, I Remember Mama (1979), is just as tuneful and graceful in melody as any show he ever wrote. Based on John Van Druten’s 1944 play, this gentle, sweet work chronicles a year in the life of a poor Norwegian…